joi, 7 iulie 2011

...and looking at all these people, all around me, trying to sketch details of their emotions - the angle of their eyebrows, the length of their smile, the way in which they kept their feet, sometimes close to each other's, sometimes apart, sometimes entangled, they way they would change their mood and expressions and how the most insignificant details (the wrinkles, the discreet moles, the freckles, some loose locks of hair) were working together to build up complex instant that would last less that a second, instants of most significance, instants that would pass unnoticed save for me capturing them in simple, thin lined, fine pencil sketches that would carve deeply into a more involved participant - just like the light of a fading star, witness of what once had been an instant - merely noticing the whole spectacle or irrationality and chance made me forget why I was there in the first place.

Even in a less crowded place, like the restaurant I was in, I would often mix my feelings with the alcohol fumes and lose myself in the mist of the whiskey or the occasional rum or rather the rare both and enjoy the waltz of the circus acrobats of small-talk, restaurant conversations, conjugal fights, innocent smiles, timid glances, obsessed stares...

But against all the odds or, better said, oddly enough, I would be no more than an uninvolved participant, a spectator with no responsibility, inspite of some moments when I would catch the eyes of another, a curious glance or a shy smile. Just a passer-by, a nomad, a passenger, the occasional uninvited guest. Though in the centre of it all, I would be everything but the centre of their attention. There had been nights, most of them actually, when I would go completely unnoticed. I enjoy those nights, nights in which I would have my drinks quietly, I would capture the expressions in my sketches without further emotional complications or unnecessary interruptions and I could return to the couch I had temporarily borrowed in a flat I had rented with three months payed in advance. There I would spend most of my time, combining details - eyes with smiles, noses with cheeks, jaws with ears, chins with eyebrows - in the true spirit of Doctor Frankenstein. I would take notes and everything would end in disappointment. Inspite of giving up my limitations and starting to sketch any face, no matter the age, the sex, the colour or the hair, trying to find that smallest, most insignificant detail that would spark a fuse in my memory, inspite of all the combinations I would make, nothing would even come close to the slightest resemblance to her face. And I would go on, leaving everything and everyone behind, leaving a wagon for another, just like a passenger you wouldn't care to notice. And all the other passengers were no more to me than I was to them - ghostly-shades of apparenttemporality, forever caught in the present, forever lost in the past.

Johnny-boy was an orphan who had only just met life. He had lost both his parents in what remained a mystery, for Johnny included, up until these days.

His adoptive mother, legal guardian and Johnny's closest relative, the widow Aunt Tessa, was not much of a relief for the boy's first encountered feelings in life: loss, sorrow, deprivation, abandonment... Through Tessies' (as Johnny remembered his mother calling her sister) supposed care, the boy knew not the world but dark and desert.

Soon, little John lost his memories of his parents, memories which he struggled to preserve, memories which Aunt Tessa was slowly but surely dissolving by calling the boy Jack and by hiding all the family portraits and photos. But Johnny couldn't live without her aunt as well as he couldn't live with her. His kind heart held no grudge against Aunt Tessa, nor his innocent eyes showed any hatred or even contempt for her and, at her funeral, Johnny cried as much as when his parents died.

But the good in Aunt Tessa, or what was left of it at the end of a petty life full of suffering, finally rose to the see the far sights and the warmth and brightness of the Sun's flaming arrows. In a hurriedly written testament, full of mistakes and several out-of-subject doodles on the sides of the newspaper on which it was written one night before her timely death (judging from the newspaper's date written in a minuscule font at the top of the front-page), Aunt Tessa left the still young boy in the guardianship of her late husband's furthest living relative, Professor Helga Busworth. Aunt Tessa and Helga were wretched, declared enemies since the death of Angus, Tessies' (he too used to call her Tessie) husband for who she dedicated her whole life and sadness after his tragic accident.

Helga, now an old hag herself (as Johnny remembered his aunt mentioning her one time) still thought children elemental knowledge, basic communication skills and, on all levels, manners - her own, personal obsession. Throughout her life, Helga remained unmarried and, eventually, unwanted. She knew not the pleasures of life, nor the joy of a child, nor the common feelings of women. Since Angus chose Aunt Tessa over herself, Helga forbid herself any feelings of love or pleasure or anything similar, did not permit herself to fall for anyone and dedicated her whole existence to education, knowledge and discipline while, in the process, slowly but surely, consuming her youth and humanity, from the inside, becoming something less than a hardened volcanic rock.

But Johnny hadn't had the ears to hear Helga's stone heart resonating throughout her rocky-self. Johnny was glad to have someone who could really take interest in him, teaching him all the wonders of life. Johnny became fascinated with living, even though his attempts to get closer to Helga were repelled much like a flyswatter repelled flies. Helga showed no motherly love and she showed no guardian responsibility, something Johnny was used to. She did represent, however, a strict and extremely moral, professional and educational figure, something through which Johnny always pierced one way or another.

The day in which she was taken by surprised and acted almost unconsciously soon came and Johnny reacted as normal, as natural as possible. After a profound sigh that could shatter a soul into a billion shards, Helga addressed the walls, without paying attention to Johnny's curious eyes, his fixed look and his static head.

"I feel so lonely." she uttered.

Johnny did not answer. However, he felt something new, something unexplainable, something he, especially, could not explain to himself.. She carried on as if talking to someone and being lonely in an empty room at the same time.

"There comes a time when you feel like you need someone. There comes a time when there's nothing left but... nothing. Loneliness."

"What is loneliness?" Johnny dared in a low voice, as strongly as he could.

Helga spoke with a lot of pauses, with constant emphasis on key words and with an impeccable pronunciation. Although it was clearly a desolate statement that came from the depths of Helga's spiritual wounds, she maintained her calm speaking as neutral as ever.

"It is how you feel like when you cannot lean on either side..." Helga commenced as if dictating a definition and Johnny started jotting it down accordingly. "... it is a feeling of imbalance, of permanent decline. It is when you feel empty inside with nothing on the surface of this planet to fit within. It is..."

Helga stopped. Johnny finished curving the last letter and raised the tip of the pencil from the surface of his notebook. He looked up. Helga was still facing the walls in contemplation, as if she spoke alone up until then. She still seemed to not notice Johnny.

"... it is the time when you lack company. The proper company." she ended emphatically.

"I can keep you company, Professor. I can keep you proper company." Johnny cried with a most sincere and hollow voice.

His newly acquired smile and the glare in his eyes depicted a young boy who had singlehandedly solved the biggest problem humanity had ever faced. He had the look of a man who had all the solution ever required. Helga noticed the boy for the first time. She appeared to be struggling to smile but then quickly frowned at the sight of Johnny, the orphan, the abandoned boy who was so innocent that he couldn't even understand his own misery, torment and calvary. She stared the boy with compassion for a while.

"Oh, Johnny, dear. I do believe that is a most inappropriate thing to suggest to your teacher."

Johnny looked disappointed and he swiftly assumed his former obedient position and returned to his state that most were mistaking for stupidity - condition of innocence,discretion and poor understanding of the world and of life itself.

Just for a brief moment, for the shortest period of time that there ever was, the two hearts synchronized a heart beat.

marți, 3 mai 2011

"Generations later, the fact that, down in the mud and dust beneath your metropolis, you can find abandoned frames and chassis from the city's founding traffic jam, will be impossible to believe—a run-of-the-mill urban legend. Archaeologists will argue over the best sites to excavate to find truck doors and ancient oil spills down there in the formerly mobile foundations of the city. " Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG

vineri, 1 aprilie 2011

I wake up. It's not my bed, though it seems familiar. I must have seen it in a dream...

Several steps down the stairs and I find myself in a decently sized lounge with a great opening towards the backyard. The neatly cropped lawn, the terrace view of the ocean, the violet curtains. It's all very spacious inside, all the white, all the right angles, everything carefully aligned. I'm sure nothing of this is mine though I've seen all this before.

Just as I try to makes something of the nonsense I'm trapped in, I sink even deeper. Placed against an empty wall, a wooden table with a typewriter on it. Maybe this place is mine, after-all? The stream of thoughts is rudely interrupted by a shout coming from outside:

"Good morning, honey!"

As I look in the direction of the high-pitched cry I'm blinded by the shiniest, brightest light. My unadapted eyes struggle against something I have never thought I'd see again: the Sun.

While the burning sensation clears, images start to form. First, they all appear in a hectic sporadic movement then, they start to settle. Outlines start appearing and I can make out some of the shapes. Out of the pitch black, the white spots begin to combine with colour and, as I get used to the powerful light, I can clearly see the blue sky separated by the horizon from the dark navy-blue ocean. In between, a canvas stands on an easel depicting a miniature image of what I'm beginning to see. The horizon merges with the horizon line represented on the canvas.

Just in front of the canvas stand a most-familiar silhouette. My heart starts pounding and just like a huge hedge hammer I plummet downwards and hit the ground with a loud

Buzz! I wake up. Again and again and again. And in my wakefulness I dream the same dream, over and over and over again. Was she not everything I desired or am I only now beginning to see?

I realise that I am forever doomed to live inside my mind though, in this world, I am numb and lonely. I somehow am trapped inside her own fantasy, an intruder forever to complete her ideal - independent of myself. But forever is a very short period and, sometimes, this span is too close to too short to ever mean something - just as she's no more than what I imagine her to be.

I am forever to be captive in a paradise of plenitude and happiness and never taste the sweetness of it, for though she represents the ideal in my projection of a relationship, I know now that I am just attracted by the idea of what she would mean. I live an artificial life - she is not my lover for this plastic world contains no love, she is not my friend for she has not the notion, she is not my muse for she has not the value.

luni, 28 martie 2011

"When there's nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire"Douglas Campbell

An artist dies. His wife shoots her brains out the kitchen window.

The ivy covering the façade leads a thin dense stream of blood all the way to the first floor.

Below, a red-haired girl stands against a hedge - her eyes filled with sorrow, the tip of her nipples piercing gently through her black sweat soaked sweater. Small pieces of brain fall upon her beautiful unsuspecting head.

Just across, a man wearing tight jeans and a black-leather jacket steps out of the bus at its last station and walks away even further. He is beyond lost - in his path, in his mind and in his heart. A nobody going towards the nowhere.

The wavy blood stream makes its way onto the pavement, under and between the legs of the red-haired girl - reflecting her desperate look just for one moment - onto the streets, escaping through the person-hole, beneath the bus, into the sewage.

A couple of crawls on the elbows away, in the neighbouring building, close to the top floor but not quite at it, if you are to push open the old putrid wooden door - which, if you stand still and quiet enough, resonates the many crunching teeth of the many termites - you will reveal a house-full of moths. Inside it resides a man whose only joy in life is to keep his only two remaining corroded-teeth as clean as possible. His front teeth makes him look like a bunny rabbit, or even something more sinister - a sewage rat. Which would be of amusement since the tap water he is using for rinsing is of sewery-nature, now with a sour-sweet taste of blood.

Through the open window a moth escapes - one of its wings heavy and imbued with water from passing under the tap - and sits to rests its tiny lungs and fragile feet on the wool-shoulder of a young man standing on the edge of the roof, right above the hare-looking man.

Hanging in rags, counting bruises and cuts, a drunk whose only definition of life is the nasty part between drinking that starts and ends with a fine drink is positioned, within two inches of error, unknowingly, to save the young man's life. A nifty-bow, a careful lunge, a head-forth dive, inertia and then a combination of sounds: several cracks, a meat-hitting-meat sound, a meat-hitting-concrete sound and a suppressed shout.

A grog-soaked, salt-covered grand frigate sinks, the sloop built to keep afloat raises its sails once more. A young man learns that if something is impossible to reach, the most likely route towards it doesn't count as most likely anymore - in a world that is not yours or a you that is not of this world, despite the illusion, there is no place to run to and no place to run from - you are trapped between what you could have and what you want, what you dislike and what you need to lose.